William Slim

William Slim (6 August 1891-14 December 1970) was Governor-General of Australia from 8 May 1953 to 2 February 1960, succeeding William McKell and preceding William Morrison. Slim was famous for his role in World War II as a Bitish Army general, commanding Allied land forces in Southeast Asia during the war with Japan.

Biography
In 1940 Slim took command of a division of Indian troops and led them against the Italians at the Battle of Gallabat in the Sudan, where he was later wounded. He recovered and commanded the same unit during military operations in IRaq the following year. In mid-1941 he participated in the occupation of Vichy France's Syria and then invaded Iran to quell an imminent revolt that was being encouraged by Nazi agents. The campaign ended when Slim entered Tehran, the capital.

He was sent out to the Far East to take charge of Burma I Corps in March 1942. The situation was deteriorating fast as the British and local troops were in the middl of a morale-sapping retreat over hundreds of miles of difficult terrain. Many of them did eventually escape capture or death at the hands of the Japanese invaders and reached India, but they were in no position to launch counterattacks. Slim was ordered to take over another corps and set about revitalizing it as a fighting force. His qualities were fully recognized in the latter part of 1943, when he was given command of the Fourteenth Army, which had been ordered to retake Burma despite being somewhat starved of supplies for the remainder of the war.

Slim moved to block a Japanese thrust into the Arakan region of Burma in February 1944 and then the Japanese launched a major offensive towards the border towns of Imphal and Kohima in March. This was eventually beaten off by July and the Japanese were forced into a major withdrawal that cost them thousands of troops. Slim followed them methodically and retook Mandalay at the end of March 1945. He then raced south to take the capital, Rangoon, unopposed, in May. During the final months his command was engaged in mopping-up operations across the Far East, including Malaya and Indonesia.